


no tears left for dead hearts

by Interjection



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: "and I add even more angst", Angst, I speedwrote this while listening to Ranboo's stream in the background, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, One Shot, Threats of Violence, and I'm like "okay but what if this was Tommy and Toriel was Phil", he's still streaming when I'm publishing this btw, heavily inspired by Ranboo's stream, there's so many ways you can interpret this, undertale crossover, where he's belovd falling down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29596527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interjection/pseuds/Interjection
Summary: There is a human in the ruins.Philza should be used to this by now.“It’s kill or be killed,” the child then says. And somehow, the wrench in his heart is greater than it ever was before.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 209
Collections: Completed stories I've read





	no tears left for dead hearts

The ruins are not new, and by now nothing much ever changes around here. The air crackles dusty every day he steps out of his rough bricked house, tucked into the cave corners on the border with the snow plains. 

His fellow monsters are how they always are, either content to live sprawled amidst their forgotten world, or with the vacant, glassy eyed expression that signals a looming despair with their never-ending circumstance.

The latter is becoming increasingly more likely, Phil muses, caressing a feather in his hands. It tingles as he relines the hooklets, and angles down involuntarily when he tucks it behind his ear.

A vibrating signal towards the mountain entrance, where every once in a while, his system of feathery detectors alert him of something new. 

A lost child, sometimes. A grim threat, others. An intruder, always. 

Dispelling Dream’s mockeries has become somewhat of an irregular routine, not that any of Phil’s efforts have ever mattered, in the end. Once a human falls down that cursed ravine in the cursed mountain, they never escape back home. 

Still, he tries. At the very least, Phil can claim he tried.

Not that he has anyone to claim that to. 

As he steps into the clearing, where a single beam of blinding, burning sunlight haunts him every day, he sees the human.

A child, in what he would estimate to be their teenage years. Flecks of dirt cling to a red shirt with a white center, and his hair is tangled with poison ivy. Phil feels the inexplicable urge to rush over and brush the leaves away from those steeled blue eyes.

But the scene also gives him pause. Dream, normally so prepared to do his usual song and dance, is slumped against a far side wall. Cuts slice down his side, warped slightly by his blobby white nature.

And the child stands ragged, breathing with a heaviness that could amount to rage. A knife is clasped between pale fingers, too spindly in the slivering light. His entire frame swings loosely as he lunges again - this time at Phil, he realizes just in time. 

Feathers shoot forward and knock the knife away with a few sharp jabs. Another one slams down on Dream’s head, a warning to stay subdued where he is. 

Phil sidesteps as the human lunges again, barehanded. He’s had to kill a few himself before, when their hatred overlaps too much with determination, but this is a child and for now he sees no rage. 

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he says, lowering his wings. It’s a maneuver that’s worked with relative success, with those that don’t project ill intent.

“It’s kill or be killed, you fucking idiot,” the human snarls at him, and the words blaze with so much conviction Phil knows without a doubt it was not just Dream who taught him that lesson. 

Feathers pin down again. By now Phil would have given up in most cases - with such aggression, a human would never survive outside the ruins, and carve a bloody trail on their path to inevitable demise at the likes of a monster far less tolerating than Phil. 

Normally, Phil muses. His feather trace lightly around the human’s throat, soft and singing, and the human stills with wide eyes, still brimming with defiance. A challenge. And normally, he would oblige right there - a clean slice, and far more merciful death than what another other powerful enough monster would have granted them. Their souls would float back up into the human world, safe from the grasps of monsters who would abuse such a power. 

But something in the way the human repeated - no, solidified Dream infamous lesson - it creates a strange ache in Phil’s heart. Instincts he thought would have long since died out. 

He sighs, and a feather flies over to sink deep into Dream’s head. Silently, the blob disappears in wisps of white. 

The pesky creature will be back soon, respawning by whatever strange rules his body works by. But that is not an immediate concern of Phil’s today.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he repeats again, and the human scoffs in clear disbelief, gesturing vaguely with shaking fingers at the feathers sharp against his throat, his wrists. Phil draws the feathers away, and the human slowly stumbles up.

He knows better than to attack again, in such an outmatched scenario. Phil holds a hand out in what he hopes is a placating manner.

“What do you want?” the human asks. 

Phil hesitates a moment, considering his options.

“Your name,” he settles on finally. “And your safety.”

“That's what  _ I _ want,” the human snaps. “What do you want me to give you, then? Or are you too fucking old to realize that’s an option?”

“I don’t want more dead human souls lingering around here, if you want to get pragmatic about it,” Phil says, because if there’s one thing he’s learned it’s to speak the language of beliefs. “The way it warps our minds is not an experience I wish for, but many others are willing to see past that.”

“And then they’d threaten the apex predator, wouldn’t they?” the human scoffs. Phil raises an eyebrow at the term “apex predator,” but the child has a point.

“Tommy,” the human says, and Phil nods.

“I am Philza,” he says back, “but you may call me Phil.”

“What are you gonna do to me?” Tommy asks. Phil reaches out his hand again, and this time Tommy clutches it back with a wary reluctance. 

It’s a start, Phil supposes.

The knife still lays still in the corner of their flowerbed clearing. A few feathers squirrel it away amongst Phil’s wings as he guides a limping child into the ruins, once again. 

* * *

Tommy is strange, is what Phil realizes quickly. 

He stares at the dummies moodily with a silence that deafens their already stilled world, brushes past all the creatures that attempt to make conversation, and flicks the switches with an almost mechanical flick.

He is a child, a human child, and yet he is not. Phil has encountered few that show such signs, and only Tommy with such an extent. It is as though something has broken him, far before that encounter with Dream which rattles so many.

“I made you pie,” Phil says with a dusting of cinnamon still on his fingers, and Tommy takes a single bite before closing his eyes and turning away. The bedroom door shuts with a click, and Phil is left in an empty hallway with a slice of pie that has only a single bite. 

He saves the rest of the pie in a fridge. A human has never turned down his pie, and Phil isn’t quite sure how to respond to this occurrence. 

Inevitably, Tommy asks to leave. It is only the second day, and he realizes what the stone doors are as soon as he sees them.

Phil’s wings press back into the cold, icy groves. They have never felt more like a grave as he faces Tommy with a warning, and he doesn’t know if it’s for him or the human that refuses to give up. 

“I’m leaving,” Tommy says.

“No,” Phil says back, and for a moment he believes the words to be final. 

Then Tommy presses a glass shard to his throat, tracing lightly in a mockery of everything Phil has ever worked for, and he is forced to concede.

“Please stay safe,” Phil says, and unbidden the despair comes through. Tommy turns back to him once as he takes a step into the snow, shirt still thin and ragged upon him. 

There’s - Phil almost wants to say pity, in the child’s eyes, but not quite. A tint of sadness and regret and something else like wilted flowers.

“It’s kill or be killed,” the child says.

Lead cold catches Phil’s throat. He watches, wide eyed, as the child touches his throat with one hand, glass still clutched too tight in the other. 

He steps aside from the door.

As the doors begin to close, something burns deep within his feathers.

“Wait!” he calls one last time, and his ashen gray cloak is sailing between the crack of white. 

A hand reaching out to grab its folds is the last thing Phil sees before the ruins are dead once again. 

**Author's Note:**

> I speedwrote this while listening to Ranboo's stream in the background and as of publishing this he's still streaming. Also broke one of my own rules about proofreading but I hate proofreading and I'm not holding myself to any standards for this like I normally do lol. 
> 
> yeah im supposed to be taking a writing break. i dont choose when the plot bunnies possess me though. 
> 
> no plans to add onto it but who knows


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